To Dream of Dreamers Lost: Book 3 of The Grails Covenant Trilogy

by David Niall Wilson

  They continued across the room, using the grisly stepping stones and eventually both were near enough to the second doorway to leap to the threshold. Here they stopped. They could see the length of the short passage, and at the other end stood Gustav. The old vampire was tearing at the wooden door in front of him like a mad beast.

  “Gustav!” Abraham cried. “Gustav, wait! How do we pass?”

  The old Nosferatu turned, eyes glazed with anger and madness, barely seeing the two who stood across from him. He watched them for a moment, stopping his scrabbling against the stone door, then turned away with a grunt.

  “You do not,” he called back. “You stay there. I will stop him. It is my destiny to stop him. The treasures have been in my custody. When it is over, if I do not survive, that job will be yours.”

  He returned to the door and with a sudden massive crash he slammed his fists into the door and staggered into the room. The chest that had been angled against the door spun crazily into the room, and the two inside turned, twin snarls and glittering eyes as Gustav fell headlong, staggering and forcing himself by the power of his will alone to rise and to face those within.

  Montrovant spun as the door gave way at last, watching as Gustav fell forward into the room, then diverted his eyes for just an instant. One chest remained. They had ransacked the room, digging through each chest, tossing the contents about the room, but no sign of anything that resembled a cup. No Grail. One chest between Montrovant and his fate, his destiny. One chest and Gustav, who was rolling back to his feet.

  Jeanne moved. Le Duc was not as old as Gustav, who was nearly as old to the Blood as the dark one himself, but he had other advantages. The moment the door had begun to buckle, he’d moved for his weapon. Montrovant had moved toward the chests, but Jeanne was ready for something more, something certain.

  As Gustav came back to his feet, Le Duc was on him, pouncing with amazing agility. A low, guttural growl roared up from deep in Jeanne’s throat as he moved, and as he swung his blade in a glittering arc at the older vampire’s neck, he cried out loudly, his sight clouded by the red haze of battle, and the room slowing, nearly stopping, around him.

  Gustav heard him at just the last second, rolling down and away again with a grunt, Le Duc’s blade tearing away a hunk of his cloak as it passed. There was no hesitation after the miss—the blade did a quick figure eight in the air and drove down to where Gustav rolled, following, slicing sideways and this time finding the old Nosferatu’s thigh.

  Screeching, Gustav changed tactics, sliding into the stroke, taking the damage to his leg and swiping his arm at Jeanne’s leg. Jeanne saw the motion, moved with it, leaping into the air and whirling. He came to rest, feet spread wide, balanced, and raised the sword again. Though Gustav moved with incredible speed, the battle haze had settled firmly, and to Jeanne, the entire scene seemed one of slow motion, blurred images. He saw his opponent lunge toward him, saw a long, wicked dagger slip from the folds of his cloak, all as if it were happening one image at a time, and he avoided the thrust easily, sliding to one side, feeling Gustav glance past, and driving his fist, which still gripped the pommel tightly, into the side of Gustav’s head, sending him reeling toward Montrovant.

  The dark one looked up with a growl. He had his hands on the lock of the final chest, preparing to rip the lid away, but there was no time. Gustav, seeing that the momentum of his stumble would take him to his goal, moved with it, dagger and hand extended, eyes deep with hate.

  Montrovant dove to meet Gustav’s charge, glaring in fury. He was there, and Gustav stabbed, but the blade cut only air and what had seemed to be the dark one proved only a wisp of shadow, as its owner stood high behind Gustav, arms raised and crashing down hard over the Nosferatu’s back, driving him to the floor. Montrovant moved forward as if to finish what he’d started, but Gustav rolled away, and then there was another distraction, voices, from the door, and Abraham, followed closely by a girl who stank of Kli Kodesh’s blood, swung through the portal from the hand holds on the ceiling beyond.

  Crying out in frustrated rage, Montrovant slammed his boot down where Gustav’s skull had been seconds before. Gustav, however, had ignored the newcomers, already expecting them, and taken those few seconds to slide away and rise once more. Le Duc turned to where Abraham now approached, crying out sharply and lunging. He would have taken the younger vampire out in the first charge, but Fleurette was too quick. She shoved Abraham ahead, and as he cried out, falling at the unexpected thrust from behind, Fleurette dropped.

  Jeanne had not been expecting this. His momentum was gauged to slam him into Abraham full force, and Abraham had been in the doorway. He tried to stop…to fling his arms out and catch himself, but as he moved forward the last foot, his boots met Fleurette where she’d dropped, tripping him and sending him in a long sprawl.

  Arms pinwheeling madly, crying out in surprise and sudden fear he careened into the passage beyond the door. There was a loud, whooshing sound as he passed the first alcove, a sharp, empty cry, and Fleurette, who was just rising to her feet, watched in horrified amazement as the huge blades shot out from the alcove…four of them, dicing Le Duc’s body into quarters. He flew on past, and the bits of what he had been passed the second alcove, setting off three more blades, one of which caught his head, which had begun to drop down, sending it up again, skittering away.

  Fleurette saw his eyes then, hollow and empty, the anger on his lips in no way diminished by the finality of his mis-step. His blade dropped, crashing and grinding, glancing off the others as they passed through the passage, clattering off the wall and setting off the last set of blades. As they slid through the passage, she saw his head a final time, and the blade, as they met. The blade lodged in Le Duc’s skull solidly, swinging the remnant of him around and smacking into the wall, cleaving his skull with a soft, wet shwuk!

  Fleurette wrenched her eyes from the image, twisting back to the room. Abraham was circling slowly to where Montrovant and Gustav were facing off again. Fleurette slid around the opposite side, knowing she was next to useless in a pitched battle with two so old, but that spreading their forces, and Montrovant’s attention, changed those odds. As a diversion she was more than adequate.

  “You aren’t going to get it, dark one,” Abraham said softly. His eyes shifted to the side, gaze lighting on the last chest. “There are too many of us, and you have no chance. How does it feel to have everything come down to this? How do you like the idea of your failure brought to you by the hands of the one you decided it was more interesting to have alive and chasing you?”

  Montrovant’s eyes glittered, and his lips curved into a smile. A momentary shadow passed across his face as he stared out through the doorway to where Le Duc had disappeared. Another ending. Another part of what he had been slipping away.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Montrovant replied at last, his eyes intent on Gustav, who circled slowly. The dark one kept pace with his opponent. “I will drink your blood from the Grail this day, boy, and you will be nothing more than the memory you should have been when last we met.”

  Gustav lunged. Montrovant, ready and just a fraction of a second quicker, slid to one side, grabbing the arm that thrust the dagger to his throat and dragging it past him, tossing his opponent hard to the wall, where he landed with a crash that stunned him for just a second. Montrovant turned then to Abraham, lunging, but at that second, Fleurette dove in from the side, sending a quick kick toward his head.

  Montrovant dodged the kick, barely, but it slowed his forward momentum enough that Abraham was able to move safely out of the way and aim a kick of his own, which the dark one did not manage to dodge. It connected solidly, and Montrovant rolled away, a flash of shadow, and was suddenly across the room, glaring back, bent slightly where his ribs had absorbed the blow. “It will take a great deal more than that, Abraham, to bring an end to the nightmare I have become to you. Do not make the mistake of believing for even an instant that I won’t walk on the ground that covers y
ou when your brief stay here is done.”

  Gustav was on his feet again, and Montrovant spun so that his back was to the chest. Regardless of the disadvantage it put him at, he wasn’t moving away from his goal. His three antagonists moved forward together once more, and he squatted slightly, taking a defensive stance and watching warily. He knew he was faster and stronger than any of them, but he would not underestimate a foe at such a crucial moment. He had done so in the past, and he had paid the price.

  Before he could make a move, however, or face another attack, soft laughter floated in from the passageway beyond, and they all froze. Kli Kodesh appeared in the doorway seconds later, a shock of hair held high in his hand, part of Jeanne’s scalp still clinging to it.

  “It would appear your hotheaded young protégé made a tactical error, Montrovant,” the ancient cackled. “Oh, this is too delicious.”

  He flung the bit of scalp to the side with a shrug and stepped to the center of the room, ignoring them all and turning, taking in the scene with eyes bright. Montrovant had seen the old one in this mood before, and it did not bode well for the events to follow.

  “You have led us a long way if your only plan was to end it yourself,” Montrovant said at last. “I grow weary of the game.”

  As he spoke the dark one concentrated. He’d considered every possible scenario, or so he’d believed, for this final moment. He’d known there would be conflict, had known, even, who and what that conflict might entail. He’d underestimated Abraham, but the young one was not the danger. None but Kli Kodesh had ever truly stood in his way.

  But it would end. As Kodesh turned to him once more, getting ready to make some inane comment about how entertaining it had all been, or how it would end, Montrovant struck. He lashed out with his mind, focused and powerful, putting every ounce of his will behind that strike, every pent-up frustration, every dream and desire of his long quest.

  The effect was one he’d learned from Eugenio long years past, a thing he’d tried, shrugged his shoulders at, and tossed aside, but recently reconsidered. Sometimes the old ways were not wrong. Sometimes there were things one could learn if one paid attention.

  There was a crackle of tension in the air, a sudden stab and draining of energy as it took effect, and Montrovant staggered back. He was blinded himself for a few seconds, but the gasps and cries around him told him that, at least in part, he had succeeded. Even Kli Kodesh let out a sudden, keening wail. For once, the old one had not foreseen everything.

  Blinking once, Montrovant opened his eyes and glanced about quickly. The others were staggering blindly, fists pressed to their eyes, lost. With a fierce cry of triumph, he turned, slipping to the side of the chest and taking the hasp in his hand firmly, jerking up and out with incredible strength and flinging the wooden lid back with a crash. He only needed a moment. He had no idea how long the blindness would last.

  To blind those within range had never seemed an important skill when he was new to the Blood. Eugenio had shaken his head, insisting, telling him over and over that there were no weapons one could do without, that there was an instant in time for each bit of knowledge to prove its usefulness. Cowardly as an attack, this particular bit of learning had finally found its moment.

  As he tossed the lid back, he stepped back quickly. A cloud of dust had risen, as if flung, as he pressed the top open, and before he could react it had settled over him. He shook his head in annoyance, stepping closer again, peering inside, his hands tossing the top layers of packing away quickly. He was past the first layer, mostly silk cloth, and pulling packages from the interior, when he noticed that his arms seemed heavier. Blinking, he fought the sudden lethargy, eyes narrowing.

  He pulled free a larger package, dragging the silk wrapper from it with a growl. A stone, a simple stone. He pulled free another, and the same thing, this one flat and oblong, but stone. A low cry rose from deep in his chest. He clawed at the box, his knees growing weaker, realizing too late his error in opening the chest so hastily. Cursing, he fought to remain upright, dragging each package free, the stones dropping away to the sides now and his bright, hungry eyes watching in panic as they fell away.

  Then he slumped forward, unable to rise, the motion causing another cloud of the odd dust to rise. From far away he heard voices…heard Kli Kodesh.

  “Stay back!” the old one barked. The voices were nearing, and Montrovant’s fogged brain realized that the blindness had worn off. “Don’t go near him until he is perfectly still and I can close that chest, or you’ll end up the same way.”

  Montrovant felt his head crash down into the chest…hard…felt the world slipping away beneath him, and managed only a final curse of frustrated rage as his mind emptied and flowed away from him. His final coherent thought was how much he hated Kli Kodesh’s cackling, ancient laughter, as it echoed through his mind and chased him into darkness.

  TWENTY

  Montrovant awakened slowly, shaking his head to try to clear the odd lethargy that had claimed him. At first he had no recollection of where he was, or what had happened, but as the haze faded and his thoughts returned, he bucked up, trying to rise, eyes wide open very suddenly, twisting from right to left. He could not move. His arms were held tightly, and his legs bound so completely they were held immobile. The most he could do was to writhe, worm-like, on the cold stone where he lay.

  “Ah,” a cold, rasping voice said softly, “he has rejoined us.”

  “You!” Montrovant spat. He tried to move again, actually succeeded in sliding an inch or two across the floor toward Kli Kodesh’s boot before lying in place and arching, struggling against whatever bound him.

  “You will find the bands quite sufficient to contain you,” Kodesh said softly. “They worked well enough on young Abraham here that you should have been convinced long ago.”

  Montrovant shook again, screaming in rage. Helpless.

  His gaze shifted about the room, and he realized he was no longer in the vault. It was a large chamber, richly hung with tapestries and luxuriously furnished. There were others, many others, gathered around, but only four stood near him. Kodesh, Gustav, Abraham, and the girl he’d seen, the girl who’d killed Jeanne.

  “It was not in that chest,” Kodesh said softly. “I never underestimated you after our first meeting, dark one. You would have found it and taken it if I’d made it that easy. Those other treasures were very real, and there were forces within that room that, if you knew their secrets, could undo the world as we know it. The Grail, beyond all that, is special. It is safe. You pulled away the lid, but you did not look beneath the chest, where the second vault’s security begins.”

  “You lie,” Montrovant spat, eyes blazing, and arching again from the floor. “You lie again as if it is easier to you than any other speech. If I am a fool, it is for believing you ever had the Grail in the first place.”

  “I will tell you truly,” Kodesh said, laughing with a brittle, harsh tone that removed all trace of humor from the sound, “I have never been able to separate myself from it. You are damned, dark one, but I am doubly cursed. My existence, such as it is, is not mine to end, even should I want to. I am bound in ways you could never understand, and the Grail is very real. You were right to covet it, to seek it. You were wrong to believe you could succeed. I am not the only power standing between you and such a holy relic.”

  “You will not keep it from me,” Montrovant raged.

  “You are correct in that, Montrovant,” Abraham cut in, stepping forward and leaning close. “We will keep you from it instead. I think you will appreciate what is in store for you; perhaps better than any other, you will see the irony.”

  He stood aside then, and Montrovant caught sight of a coffin-length wooden box. It was not quite as large as the one in which he’d imprisoned Abraham, but it looked very solid, and there were metal bands along the length of it and across the sides, waiting to be bolted in place.

  Montrovant struggled wildly then, and the others did not hesitate longer.
Abraham moved to his feet, and Gustav to his shoulders, and he was lifted and carried quickly to the box, writhing in their grip, and lowered inside without ceremony. He tensed his muscles, screaming loudly and tearing the skin, snapping bone, gritting his teeth as he struggled against the binding steel, in vain. The pain cleared his thoughts for a bright moment of agony, and that became the last sight, the image that stuck in his mind; the four of them, staring down at him. Each face was etched in a different expression.

  Kli Kodesh, grinning as always, watched and enjoyed the play of emotion over Montrovant’s face, and the thought of the dark one’s fate. Gustav, eyes still angry, watched sullenly. Abraham, torn between memories of his own shorter imprisonment and near destruction, and a satisfied smile of revenge. The girl—Montrovant didn’t even know her name, but she watched him with the only hint of real emotion in the group.

  Then Montrovant knew only darkness as the lid was shoved into place, and he struggled harder still, hearing the metal bands wrapped tightly over the wooden lid, and the scraping of the bolts being pressed into place and cinched tight. His mind slipped slowly into that darkness, and he screamed. Over and over, louder, louder still, until it seemed the box, and the world beyond it, must crumble and fall away from the force of his voice alone. There were no answers, and the bolts were tightened quickly and with finality.

  Outside the crate, the screams were only soft, muffled echoes, easily forgotten. As Gustav’s men completed the securing of the crate, and carted it down to the lower level to be loaded into a wagon, the others turned away, moving to a table near the wall. Kli Kodesh sat at one end, Gustav at the other, and Abraham pulled a chair out for Fleurette to join him along the outer edge.

  At first, all were silent, lost in their own thoughts. Then at last Abraham spoke.

  “We will leave tomorrow at sunset. I want to get back to Santorini and Rome before too many days and nights pass away. I have a keep to claim, and a lot of questions to get answered before I know how I stand there. I’m not too happy about being chased by Noirceuil, and Lacroix is on his way back there now, as well as Montrovant’s men. There will be a lot of questions on all sides, and too few answers.”